The significant warnings uttered by Flood and others against the danger of postponing reform until the excitement temporarily awakened upon the subject had subsided and the volunteers disbanded, proved, unfortunately, to be only too well justified.  Where Flood, however, had erred, had been in failing to see that a reform which left three-fourths of the people of the country unrepresented, could never be more than a reform in name.  This error Grattan never made.  During the next ten or twelve years, his efforts were steadily and continually directed to obtaining equal political power for all his fellow-countrymen alike.  Reform was indeed the necessity of the hour.  The corruption of Parliament was increasing rather than diminishing.  From 130 to 140 of its members were tied by indissoluble knots to the Government, and could only vote as by it directed.  Most of these were the nominees of the borough-owners; many held places or enjoyed pensions terminable at the pleasure of the king, and at the smallest sign of insubordination or independence instant pressure was brought to bear upon them until they returned to their obedience.

Although free now to import and export from the rest of the world no change with regard to Ireland’s commercial intercourse with Great Britain had as yet taken place.  In 1785, a number of propositions were drawn up by the Dublin Parliament, to enable the importation of goods through Great Britain into Ireland, or vice versa, without any increase of duty.  These propositions were agreed to by Pitt, then Prime Minister, and were brought forward by him in the English House of Commons.  Again, however, commercial jealousy stepped in.  A number of English towns remonstrated vehemently; one petition despatched to the House alone bearing the signature of 80,000 Lancashire manufacturers.  “Greater panic,” it was said at the time, “could not have been expressed had an invasion been in question.”  The result was, that a number of modifications were made to the propositions, and when returned to Ireland, so profoundly had they been altered, that the patriotic party refused to accept them, and although when the division came on, the Government obtained a majority it was so small that the Bill was allowed to drop, and thus the whole scheme came to nothing.

Outside Parliament, meanwhile, the country was in a very disturbed state.  Long before this local riots and disturbances had broken out, especially in the south.  As early as 1762, secret societies, known under the generic name of Whiteboys, had inspired terror throughout Munster, especially in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and Tipperary.  These risings, as has been clearly proved by Mr. Lecky, had little, if any, connection with either politics or religion.  Their cause lay, as he shows, on the very surface, in the all but unendurable misery in which the great mass of the people were sunk.

[Illustration:  RIGHT HON.  EDMUND BURKE. (From an engraving by Jones after Romney.)]